


And They All Lived Happily Ever After

by OldToadWoman



Category: The Dead Zone
Genre: Fix-It, Fluff, Humor, No Plot/Plotless, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 22:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7592638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldToadWoman/pseuds/OldToadWoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And they all lived happily ever after and had lots of sex because they deserve it, damn it! (Alternate to season six.) This isn't really fix-it fic so much as pretend-it-never-went-wrong fic. (I never got around to writing the actual sex. Sorry.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	And They All Lived Happily Ever After

* * *

Walt Bannerman did not die. Heeding Johnny's warning, Walt alerted the fire department. He pulled into the church parking lot at the same time as the fire trucks. 

Reverend Purdy didn't die either and was only singed a very tiny bit (which served him right anyway).

Some guy named Janus did die, but that was really for the best all around.

Nor did Herb Smith die. Walt told Johnny everything he knew about Herb's secret captivity. They called in Dana Bright and rescued Herb with a television crew alongside them, capturing it all on video and exposing Congressman Stillson's twisted exploitation of an aging mental patient.

Stillson's criminal trial was still pending, but the mere fact that he was being guided by the so-called psychic visions of a certified lunatic had already permanently destroyed his political career and thus no one at all died in a nuclear apocalypse.

*** * ***

Herb moved home with Johnny and didn't even seem to notice that he'd moved at all. At times he still got confused about who his son was or whether Vera was still alive or not, but most of the time he was happy and that was the important thing.

Johnny almost thought of his father as a living ghost. They wandered through the same house and ate at the same table, but they belonged to different times. 

And then one day, Herb had turned up in the kitchen at breakfast wearing his jacket and announced, "We need to go get that plumber now."

"There's something wrong with the plumbing?" Johnny wasn't used to his father addressing him directly.

"No, no," Herb said. "We just need to get that wee-wee thing with the plumber."

Interpreting Herb's proclamations could often be tricky and Johnny was not at all encouraged by the direction this conversation was taking. 

"There hasn't been an _accident_?" Johnny asked hesitantly.

He didn't want to admit his concerns in front of his father, but he suddenly had the urge to check the state of Herb's bathroom. There weren't any puddles he needed to know about, were there?

"No, no accident. Just the flu. Some rest, plenty of fluids, and she'll be fine."

"Who'll be fine?"

"Kayla."

"Who?"

Herb shrugged. "I don't hire these kids. How do I know where they got her from? But we need to get the wee-wee thing now or J.J. is going to kick my butt."

"Herb. Please start at the beginning."

Herb frowned at him.

"I'm a little slow," Johnny said. "Humor me. Once more, from the beginning."

Herb sighed and started over with exaggerated slowness. "Kayla is going to get the flu and cancel so the Bannermans won't have a babysitter next Friday for your date so they need to bring J.J. here and Bruce is going to buy one of those wee-wee things with the plumber to keep him entertained but the little shit is going to kick my butt because I don't know the first thing about magic mushrooms so we need to buy it now so I have a week to practice before he gets here."

Johnny almost understood that. He didn't know anything about plans with Walt and Sarah or their babysitter, but he didn't question that Herb _did_ know something and if you just took that part on faith then the rest of it almost made sense. 

"You want me to buy a Wii?"

"The one with the plumber."

"Can I finish my breakfast first?"

"Take your time." Herb sat down at the counter and stared at him until he finished eating.

*** * ***

So they went out and bought the Wii console and made sure they had the Super Mario pack for it and the next day Bruce showed up and told Johnny all about the big date.

Bruce had somehow met the most gorgeous woman on the planet and she had a friend and they'd bumped into Sarah who was sulky that she and Walt didn't get out on dates as often as they used to now that she was as big as a house. So Bruce and Sarah had made all the arrangements for a dinner date for all of them and since Johnny had the biggest dining room, they took the liberty of choosing his house for the locale.

"Shouldn't you have asked me _before_ you invited a couple of strangers over?" Johnny asked Bruce. He didn't actually mind, but he felt Bruce should at least acknowledge that he'd taken Johnny a bit for granted.

"Hot, Johnny, hot," Bruce insisted. "And I've met the friend. She's hot too. Trust me on this."

"So, a triple date with Walt and Sarah? And I'm cooking?"

"With supervision, yes."

"God damned turtle!" Herb screamed from the other room as if on cue.

"Um," Bruce said and hesitated. "Do you think we could get him a nurse or something? Or maybe convince him to go to bed early on Friday night?"

"He already told me that he and J.J. are going to order a pizza and they'll stay in the TV room all evening."

"J.J.'s not coming. Sarah's going to get a sitter."

"Kayla's going to get the flu," Johnny said. "It's okay though. We bought a Wii and my dad has been practicing."

Another stream of profanity rose from the next room.

"He's already much better at it," Johnny added.

"This psychic thing was weird enough when there was only one of you," Bruce said.

Johnny shrugged, but half nodded.

*** * ***

Sarah called up on Thursday sobbing because the sitter had the flu and she was never going to have a nice date again ever and also she was fat and her life completely sucked. 

"Were the hormones this bad when you were pregnant with J.J.?" Johnny asked. "Because I'm kind of glad that I missed this part."

She'd yelled at him for another five minutes after that, but he finally managed to calm her down and explain that she could bring J.J. for a sleepover and Herb was, in fact, looking forward to showing off his mad Wii skills.

"You _knew_?" Sarah asked.

_Danger! Danger! Danger!_ "Maybe?"

"Johnny!"

"Sorry. I probably should have mentioned it earlier, huh?"

Sarah's voice dropped an octave. "I hate you all."

"'You all'?"

"Men. If you weren't so cute, I'd kill _all of you_. Come to think of it, that's how I keep getting pregnant. Men are just too adorable naked."

Johnny blinked into space. "Sarah? Were you this hormonal when you were pregnant with J.J.? Because I'm thinking I'm kind of sorry I missed that part."

"I hate you all," she repeated gravely and then added cheerfully, "See you tomorrow! I'm bringing dessert!"

*** * ***

Bruce hadn't been kidding about supervision. The day of the big date, Bruce showed up several hours early to help Johnny get ready. 

"You're not wearing that are you?" Bruce asked.

"Apparently not."

Bruce went upstairs and dug through Johnny's closet until he found something he deemed suitable. While he was gone, Johnny dusted in the dining room, a room he didn't use often himself, and set the table for six.

When Bruce returned from upstairs, he had his car keys in his hand. "I put your clothes out on the bed. I have to run out to the store. Do you need anything while I'm out?"

Johnny paused while setting the table. He'd been about to say something and then he'd gotten a brief vision off of one of the glasses and now he couldn't remember what he'd been about to say.

"Johnny?" Bruce asked. "You okay?"

Johnny nodded but continued to frown at the glass. "You didn't bring wine, did you?" he asked.

"No," Bruce said. "I thought we agreed that since Sara can't drink, we weren't going to have alcohol."

"I know. That's why it seemed odd."

"Johnny," Bruce said and Johnny recognized it as the same exasperated tone he himself used when his father wasn't making sense.

"Someone's going to spill this glass," Johnny explained, holding up a stemmed glass. "And it looked like it had wine in it." He finally shrugged and said, "Maybe it's a different dinner."

"That's probably it," Bruce said, spinning his car keys impatiently on his finger. "So, do you need anything while I'm out?"

Johnny shook his head, still distracted, and Bruce left. After he heard the car pull out, he remembered what he'd been about to say. He was going to ask Bruce why he was leaving when he'd only just arrived, but obviously, Bruce must have forgotten something on his way over and it wasn't a big deal.

Johnny put the wine glasses back in the cupboard and set the table with tumblers instead.

*** * ***

"Where have you been?" Johnny asked when he heard Bruce in the hallway. He'd previously been annoyed that Bruce thought he needed help getting ready, but now he was even more annoyed to discover that he did, in fact, need help and Bruce hadn't been there. "I'm not going to have this done in time. The food processor isn't working and it's taking forever to chop all this by hand."

But it wasn't Bruce. It was Herb. "The food processor isn't broken," he told him. "Bruce will figure it out when he gets back. You need to clean out the guest room now."

"Okay," Johnny said hesitantly. Asking why would just waste a lot of time and frustrate both of them, so he just repeated, "Guest room?"

"The Bannermans should spend the night. It's much simpler that way. They won't have to worry about taking J.J. home until morning."

"That's a good idea," Johnny agreed.

"And you can't stay in your room tonight," Herb added.

"I have to sleep in a guest room too?" Johnny asked, again carefully avoiding the word why.

Herb nodded. "The guest room at the far east side of the house."

"East side?"

Herb lowered his voice and added, "You are not nearly as quiet as you think you are. I can keep the boy distracted, but I'm not a miracle worker. _Far_ side of the house."

Johnny winced. "Far east side. Got it."

"It might help if you turned on a radio or something too."

"Gotcha."

Bruce walked in then and nodded at Herb. "Hey, Herb, how're you doing?

"Damned turtles are a pain in my ass, but otherwise can't complain," Herb said and walked out of the room.

Bruce laughed and shook his head as the old man left.

"I just had the most awkward conversation with my father ever."

"More awkward than the conversation I had with him earlier when he sent me out for condoms?" Bruce asked.

"It might have been the same conversation," Johnny said. " _Condoms_ are what took you an hour? Because if you'd asked me—"

"Your father says someone is sensitive to the warming gel that coats your brand. Rashes in delicate areas are not fun. Hence, special trip."

"Someone?"

"He wasn't specific," Bruce said with a smile and a shrug. "Your old man is kind of weird, but he means well and apparently _somebody_ is getting lucky tonight."

It was nice that Herb thought that. Johnny himself couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't going to go quite right tonight. He'd gotten brief flashes from the tablecloth as well as from a few of the plates. Sarah and Bruce looked irritated. Walt looked like he was trying to be invisible. Two women that he hadn't met yet were arguing about something, but he only caught snatches of words. It just didn't seem like an evening that was destined to end in a guest room with condoms.

Bruce got the food processor working and, despite his reservations, Johnny went upstairs to put clean sheets in all the guest rooms. He called Sarah and invited her to pack overnight bags for all the Bannermans. Johnny decided to put Walt and Sarah in the corner room as it was the only bedroom besides his own that had an attached bathroom. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that the pregnant lady got dibs on the bathroom. 

As he was smoothing out the bedspread, he had a disorienting vision of Sarah, sitting naked in a high-backed upholstered chair facing the bed, laughing at him. He didn't actually see who she was laughing at or why, but it seemed as if she were right there laughing at him as he tidied the room. "Glad my chores are amusing you," Johnny muttered under his breath as the vision of nude Sarah giggled uncontrollably.

*** * ***

Walt Bannerman cleaned up amazingly well. It wasn't that Johnny wasn't used to seeing Walt out of his police uniform. Walt often wore civilian clothing. Yet his civilian clothing always seemed like subtle versions of the uniform; he always projected an aura of being on duty. 

The man at Johnny's door was not on duty. Walt wore a dark suit, not black, one of those colors women gave ridiculous names to like "chocolate" or "charcoal" or something. The word that came to Johnny's mind was "fancy". He wasn't sure what it was about the suit that made him decide it was expensive, but it seemed a safe bet that Johnny was not the only one who'd had his outfit picked out for him by someone else. The main thing was that the material was thin and formfitting and showed off Walt's muscular build the way a suit normally didn't. He was pretty sure Walt wasn't even wearing a gun.

"We need to put this in the refrigerator before it gets warm," Sarah said, handing a giant bowl to Johnny.

It was heavier than he expected and he audibly "oofed" as he took it from her. "What--?" 

"It's banana pudding."

"Banana... How many people are we expecting tonight?"

Walt caught his eye and very firmly shook his head at him in warning.

"Do you think there's enough?" Sarah asked.

There was, in Johnny's opinion, more than enough for all six of them, plus Herb and J.J., to become violently ill of a banana pudding overdose. He glanced at Walt again. Walt could convey an awful lot with his eyes. Right now his eyes said, _Don't go there, dude,_ but there was a smirk behind it that seemed to be adding, _but it would be kinda fun to see somebody else step in it this time._

"I'll just go put this, um, make space in the fridge for this. Come on in."

J.J. was unenthusiastically dragging a sleeping bag and a pillow behind him. "What kind of pizza are we getting?"

"That's up to you and Herb. He's got the Wii set up down the hall. Go see."

"You got a Wii?" J.J. perked up noticeably. "Cool."

Herb was as good as his word and they didn't see the kid again until morning.

*** * ***

Things didn't really start to go wrong until Nadia and Kellie arrived. Nadia had a bottle of wine in each hand and Johnny resigned himself to buying a new tablecloth. (The stain was going to come out, but the dry cleaners were going to misplace it for three weeks and, when it was finally returned, it would have a new stain in a different place and it really wasn't going to be worth the bill.)

"Oh, we weren't going to serve alcohol," Bruce said delicately, trying to nod at Sarah without her seeing the gesture.

"Yeah," Nadia said brightly. "Kellie said that. That's why we brought our own."

"It's okay," Sarah said. "Don't let me spoil your fun." The words were gracious. The voice was not. Walt shot Johnny another look and Johnny had the distinct impression that Walt was keeping a running tally of things Johnny owed him for.

The women shed their coats and Bruce hung them up. It was a warm night when coats would not be otherwise called for, but Kellie and Nadia were, between them, wearing almost enough clothing for one person, provided that person wasn't terribly modest. The expression on his face clearly indicated that Bruce had just lost all higher brain function. Walt only gave Johnny another glare which meant that another tally mark had been chalked up in Johnny's debit column.

Introductions were made, although only Walt and Johnny hadn't met the women before. There was an awkward, indeed pregnant, pause when Nadia's gaze got lost in Sarah's cleavage. Sweet schoolteacher Sarah, as it happened, was nearly spilling out of her own dress. It had fit her quite respectably before the pregnancy, but it was now downright risqué. Nadia was not the most well-endowed woman in the room and this was very likely a situation she was unaccustomed to being in.

"So, um, dinner is almost ready and then Sarah made banana pudding for dessert."

"Banana pudding!" Nadia laughed, though the laugh had little humor in it. "I haven't had pudding since I was a kid. How fun."

Johnny didn't even look at Walt, but he knew another tally mark had been made.

*** * ***

Kellie was nice enough, but, as Johnny's luck would have it, Nadia was his date for the evening. This might have been a perfectly acceptable situation if they were at a party or bar or possibly even if it had just been a foursome with Bruce. But there are some people you just don't bring home to meet your mother. Or, by extension, your pregnant ex-girlfriend and her husband.

The pizza arrived and Johnny paid for it. Herb carried it off to the back of the house muttering something about waffles for breakfast. 

Nadia found the wine glasses and poured everyone a glass including Sarah. "Oops," she said. "That's right. You can't have any, can you?" She shrugged and added, "Oh, well. More for me."

Johnny decided that Herb was mistaken about a few things because by that point Johnny was quite positive that he wasn't going to need to sleep anywhere but in his own room and very much alone. He tried to keep his end of the conversation going and hoped for Bruce's sake that Kellie wouldn't mind that he and Nadia hadn't hit it off very well.

Johnny served dinner and Nadia poured more wine. As he was getting the first course from the kitchen, Bruce followed and hissed at him. "Can you _try_ to pay attention to her?"

"Seriously? She's being kind of obnoxious."

"Kellie says she gets nervous. She's trying to overcompensate because she thinks you don't like her."

_Probably because I don't like her._ "Sorry."

Johnny forced a smile on his face as he brought the food to the table. He even made a point of serving Nadia first. 

Sarah took the lead in making small talk and things seemed to be smoothing out a little as they began to eat. But Nadia and Kellie had clearly expected there to be a bit more _party_ in the dinner party and Johnny was starting to feel like a fuddy-duddy. Walt was doing his best to ignore the fact that Kellie and Nadia seemed to be flirting with him. (Bruce seemed less pleased than Sarah about this development.) And the more reserved Walt behaved, the more Kellie and Nadia tried to draw him out with more flirting.

It was shaping up to be exactly as he'd foreseen, so Johnny wasn't surprised at all when Nadia knocked over his wine glass. The part he hadn't seen coming was that most of the red wine ended up on Walt and not just the tablecloth.

Walt looked annoyed, but Sarah looked downright horrified. "Quick! You need to wash it before it sets!"

Nadia offered profuse apologies, tainted slightly by the fact that she was giggling. Walt assured everyone that it was fine. "No worries. Look. It blends right into the jacket. You'll barely be able to see it when it dries."

"But the shirt, Walt," Sarah pleaded.

Johnny couldn't detect anything special about the shirt. It was a white button-down dress shirt and it looked like every other white button-down dress shirt. It was apparently special to Sarah though. Or possibly this was another pregnancy thing.

"Do you have any club soda?" Kellie asked."I read somewhere that it works better than water."

"Blot it first before you add water," Bruce suggested.

The next thing Johnny knew, Walt was completely shirtless while everyone fussed over him, offering varying opinions on the best way to get out the stain. And if his date hadn't already been ruined, that would have been the capper right there. Because when Walt Bannerman is shirtless, all the rest of the men in the world might as well be invisible. He knew Walt worked out, but he had no idea where he found the time to work out _that_ much. He looked like he worked in a gym instead of behind a desk at the sheriff's office. It wasn't vanity. He couldn't imagine Walt working out in front of a mirror trying to perfect those pecs. It was Walt's pervasive sense of duty. He might have been promoted up to a desk job, but unlike a lot of top cops who were content to let their underlings do the grunt work, Walt was always prepared to defend the public with his own hands.

"Johnny!"

"Huh?"

Sarah rolled her eyes at him. "I said, I'm sure you have a spare shirt you could lend my husband. Unless, of course, you'd prefer for him to remain shirtless through the rest of dinner."

Kellie and Nadia both giggled and Walt blushed. 

"Oh, yeah, sure." Johnny went upstairs to get a shirt and then realized he had no idea what kind of shirt he should choose. Another dress shirt? It probably wouldn't fit right. He had no idea what size Walt wore. The man was muscular, but with no spare fat at all, so he was also lean. He worried his own shirts might be too tight through the shoulders, but then again maybe they would be baggy. He started to grab a sweatshirt, half thinking that if Nadia was going to spill anything else it might as well be on a sweatshirt. But then he imagined Sarah's face if he brought down something grubby. So he finally settled on a plain green knit pullover.

When he returned, they were still giggling. The mood seemed to at least have been lightened, but there was also an argument of some kind going on.

"No, I don't think so," Bruce said. "He's just like that. He gets distracted."

"Denial," Kellie said. "Pure denial."

"Can we please not have this conversation right now?" Walt asked.

"I don't know," Sarah said. "She's got a point."

"No way!" Bruce said.

"Want me to prove it?" Nadia asked.

"You'll just prove yourself wrong," Bruce said.

Everyone went silent when Johnny walked into the room. They were sitting back down and Walt, bare-chested, had returned to eating his dinner, which struck Johnny as very surreal for some reason. "I, um, I wasn't sure if any of my dress shirts would fit right so--" He waved the pullover vaguely. "I hope it's okay."

"It's fine, John," Walt said. He stood and took the shirt and pulled it on over his head, muscles rippling with the motion. "Thanks."

"You can keep it," Johnny said. "It looks better on you anyway."

Kellie burst out laughing at that point.

"See!" Nadia said.

"Did I miss something?" Johnny asked.

Nadia chugged back the last half of her glass, set it on the table, and then stood up quickly, too quickly. "Wooo!" she laughed as she swayed. Johnny wasn't sure how much she'd had to drink, but the second bottle of wine was nearly empty and he hadn't noticed anyone other than Nadia take more than one glass. "Okay," she continued once she'd regained her balance. "We just want to test a little theory. Walt, take your shirt back off."

Walt looked at Sarah. She was red-faced from laughing already "Why not?" she said with shrug. And Walt pulled the shirt back off over his head.

"There," Walt said. "Happy?"

Everyone laughed except for Johnny who had clearly missed a joke somewhere. And then Nadia mimicked the motion and pulled her dress off over her head.

"What the--?" Johnny was absolutely mystified now because no one else seemed to think this was weird at all. Nadia was just standing there in nothing but bra, panties, and high heels and Walt was stripped to the waist. And, okay, Walt was clearly a little embarrassed and kept looking to Sarah with a husbandly, "Is this still okay?" look, but he continued to stand there, more or less on display, while the others giggled.

"I--whu--Seriously! What the hell?!" Johnny shouted.

"For the record, we can hear you!" Herb shouted back from the other room.

And again everyone but Johnny laughed. Johnny was just trying to hang onto what little grip he had on reality. He was also getting flushed and also, well, _flushed_ at the overwhelming sight of so much bare flesh. He tried to keep his voice as calm and reasonable as possible when he asked, "Walt, what's going on?"

"Eyes are up here, John," Walt said with a smirk.

"What?"

"You were staring at my chest."

"I was not."

"You kind of were," Bruce said.

"I--who wants dessert?" Johnny walked into the kitchen and got Sarah's enormous bowl of banana pudding out of the refrigerator. Behind him, he heard more giggling and Nadia, presumably still in her underwear, said, "See!"

Yet when he returned with the pudding, Nadia was not only dressed, she was putting on her coat.

"But we still have pudding," Johnny said weakly.

Bruce sighed. "Yeah, we'll get to that. But Nadia isn't, uh, feeling well, so Kellie's going to take her home now."

"Oh, well. More for me." Sarah said with smile.

Nadia stomped her foot, nearly knocking herself over in the process and then stormed out, slamming the door behind her.

Bruce walked with Kellie to the door and Johnny overheard him tell her, "I'm _really_ sorry. Tell Nadia that I had no idea."

"It's okay," Kellie said with a shrug. "I've actually had worse dates. Give me a call sometime."

After she left, Johnny sputtered, "What the hell? Seriously? Did you just apologize for _me_? Nadia was the one who--!"

"We can still hear you!" Herb called out again. "The guest room on the _east_ side of the house!"

"Do you understand him?" Bruce asked.

Johnny shrugged. "More than I've understood some people today. He says the guest rooms on the far side of the house can't be heard from the TV room."

"Is that where you're putting us?" Sarah asked.

"Yeah."

"Good." There was something about her smile that was a little disconcerting, but Johnny couldn't put his finger on what. "Be a dear and go bring in our overnight bags," she added tossing Johnny the car keys.

"I can--" Walt said reaching for the pullover.

"No, no. Johnny can get it. _You_ don't need to go anywhere. You also don't need to get dressed." She playfully tugged the shirt out of Walt's reach and Johnny decided to go get their bags so he didn't have to watch them flirt.

*** * ***

When Johnny returned, he found only Bruce holding several spoons and looking confused.

"Where--?"

"Upstairs."

"They're not, um, _turning in_ already?" He had recognized that glint in Sarah's eye. She was most definitely not planning on her husband getting any sleep anytime soon. 

"Oh, no," Bruce said. "Sarah just decided we should have dessert upstairs where we won't disturb anyone."

Johnny glanced at the table and confirmed that the giant bowl of banana pudding was gone. The green pullover, however, was still there.

"Um."

"I may not be a psychic," Bruce said. "But my spidey sense tells me shit's about to get weird. Am I right?"

Johnny headed up the stairs without replying. Bruce followed, seeming nearly as hesitant. 

Shit got weird.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this about four years ago and never quite finished it because somehow I never got around to writing the gratuitous sex that it clearly needs to end with. So, maybe, there will be a part two if anyone wants to read it, but otherwise just imagine whatever your kink is in whatever configuration works for you.


End file.
